I’ve spent 5 months doing bullshit and had zero traction. Then I needed 6 weeks more to make it right

Hi people,

I’m a 9-5 product manager and ex-freelance UI/UX designer. For the last 9 years nailing the corporate life I’ve got some background & experience in product building but more and more getting sick of how this world is built. Even though the product management role is one of the most politicized positions where you bubble around most of the time instead of spending 100% of your time, solving user’s needs.

To compensate for that I’ve started to seek what can I do. I’ve gone to my roots and raised up the problems I faced when I was a freelancer: how to get paid better? how to communicate with your clients better? how to spend less time on all the project management?

That’s how I came to the idea of building a product that helps you to get paid faster, communicate more transparently & doesn’t brainmelt on your projects. All in one platform.

So I’ve decided to jump in and build everything from scratch by myself because of several reasons:

• I was inspired by the power of no-code tools and how solo founders build SaaS on them
• I had a bad experience previously of partnering up with the wrong people (1 of 5 products wasn’t even launched, meh, I guess I’m bad at choosing people)

I chose Bubble as the most powerful no-code tool. And I’ve got some results there. Starting fast & simple I’ve made a landing page with the waitlist in a week. 60+ people signed to the waitlist (without any product screenshot on LP) during the next 5 months which actually adds confidence that the whole idea is worth it.

The next thing was to start building product MVP whose core is invoicing. As I’ve said I’m not a tech person so for me that was learning all from scratch to build any app on Bubble. What I’ve achieved with it:

• I’ve learned how to make a SPA (so it took me around 3 months and 2 times of complete app rebuilding)
• I’ve learned how to connect 3rd party apps to provide a generation of invoice PDF (tried the PDFConjurer plugin which blew up my mind and I’ve spent around 1 month nailing it). And then spent 2 weeks more migrating to the craftmypdf plugin which was much easier.
• I’ve learned how to add payments via Stripe which was (thankfully) not that hard with a bunch of tutorials

To be honest that was fun and exciting cause as a non-tech guy I was happy as a baby when each feature was getting alive and I can really make something that could be used.

But wait, 5 months passed away, I still had only simple invoice creation with the ability to create only a few items in the invoice. It’s don’t scalable at all and almost useless. I’ve started to think about it more and found myself wasting my time in a fun but inefficient way. People on the waitlist forgot about the product a long time ago (I sent an email a few weeks ago and only 3 people came across to check the beta start).

So what could be done in a different way? I’ve set with myself and admitted: I don’t have a knack for development & engineering. Even to the no-code. Well, LP is the thing that I can make but SaaS? Way no. What I’m good with? Product design. That’s the thing where I can impact. I made the bold move (against my fears and previous failures) to seek out a brilliant technical co-founder who could join forces with me. And guess what? That's exactly what unfolded!

We’ve changed the process of our work dramatically where I started to be a designer & shaping the product vision and he started to code everything from scratch.

This crazy bastard developed everything I was making 5 months just in 6 weeks. No. He not just developed everything I’ve made, but he even delivered more! Can you hear it? I’m still a design bottleneck, he’s moving much faster than I create designs for new features (and we are both on 9-5 still).

Lessons learned. I know there are a lot of cases when non-tech guys learn to code and succeed. It’s not my path, I’m suck at that. Being a team player with a proper person on board is my way. Amplify your strengths and partner up with people that balance your weaknesses. That’s my conclusion for today built on personal experience.

Just one week passed as we shipped the first beta of the product that took us 6 weeks to build (and 5 months to procrastinate). I’ll be honest with you. It’s still no success story, it’s just a little learning in the long road ahead.

Hence, if you liked this story I would much appreciate it if you join the product beta and help us to figure out how to shape it better: https://onigiri.one.

I’ll add extra 30 days of trial to everyone after signup, also if you mind supporting me and my cofounder while we improve the product here’s the promo code: EARLY50 that would secure early bird price for all upcoming features.